ST PETER'S BROMSGROVE
  • Home
  • Parish
    • About Us / Contact Us
    • Prayer
    • Services
    • Safeguarding >
      • Safeguarding: further information
    • First Intercultural Mass
    • Parish Pilgrimage
    • Clergy
    • Craft Club
    • Gallery
    • Groups >
      • Christian Aid Week
      • Justice and Peace Group >
        • Youth
      • 200 Club
    • Church Restoration
    • ACN UK
    • Church documents
    • CAFOD
    • History
    • Parish Music
  • Parish Pastoral Council
  • Catholicism
    • Catholic teaching
    • Pope Leo XIV >
      • Other Papal Communications
    • Jubilee Year 2025
    • How do I become a catholic?
    • Journey in Faith
    • Sacramental preparation
    • Catholic Education
    • John Henry Newman
  • News
  • Blog
  • Justice and Peace
    • Oppose Assisted Dying
  • Downloads

Hope

12/3/2022

1 Comment

 
A little while ago, I came across a poem by a French writer, Charles Péguy. No! I’d never heard of him either. The poem has the title “The Portal of the Mystery of the Second Virtue.” A long title for a long poem but that virtue has a short name, Hope. It is the second of the three theological virtues: Faith, Hope, and Charity. St Paul tells us frequently in his letters that it is faith that will save us and that the greatest of the three is charity. Hope is a little more difficult to separate in those letters as it is bound up with other themes of justification, righteousness, and the final triumph of Jesus over sin at his second coming.
 
Charles Péguy compares the way we see Hope to a little girl being pulled along by her two grown up sisters, Faith and Charity. They are the virtues on which our attention is most focused, the virtues which  open heaven to us now that we have been redeemed by Jesus’ sacrifice on the Cross. The little girl we know and like, but she hasn’t the maturity or power to save us. She holds on to her big sisters. But Charles opens his poem with this line:
 
“The virtue which I love most of all,” says God, “is hope.”
 
Faith, God says, doesn’t surprise me. I show myself in my creation: in the sun, the moon and the stars, in all my creatures, in the voices of children and the calm of valleys, in the sacrifice of the Mass, in life and in death. Nor does Charity surprise me. You would have to have a heart of stone not to be charitable to the poor unfortunate creatures we see, or to refuse charity to your brothers.
 
But Hope, God says, astonishes me. I am astonished that these poor children see all that is happening and believe that everything will be better tomorrow. This little hope which seems to be nothing at all.
 
The Christian people see only the two big sisters and not the little girl, but…
 
It is she (Hope), this little one who drives,
For Faith sees only what is
And she, she sees what will be
Charity loves only what is.
And she, she loves what will be.
 
Faith sees what is
In time and in Eternity
Hope sees what will be
In time and in eternity
That is, the future of eternity itself
 
Charity loves what is
In Time and in Eternity
God and neighbour;
As Faith sees
God and creation.
But Hope loves what will be
In time and eternity.
 
That is, in the future of eternity
 
Hope sees what is not yet and what will be
She loves what is not yet and what will be.
 
In the future of time and of eternity.
 
 
Advent is the time of Hope when we anticipate the coming of our Saviour, the who will redeem us from our sins and lead us to our future with God in eternity. Our hope is for grace in this life and to come to share in the glory of God in the next. As Christians, we are a people of hope, a hope that gives our faith and charity a direction. And it also gives us peace: as Psalm 4 says:
 
“In peace shall I sleep, Lord, in peace shall I rest
  firm in the hope you have given me.”
 
 
1 Comment
Helen Marsh
8/13/2023 08:45:25 pm

I find hope one of the most undervalued of virtues. It is all too compelling to become cynical and downright depressed at the state of the world, nation or by the individual struggles of life. To hope, is not to disregard those very real anxieties, but to be able to find strength in the midst of them, to continue, to hold fast to our faith, to believe that in God all will be well, even when we can't see it, let alone feel it. This is not to conflate hope with its sickly platitudinous cousin. I have found hope to be gritty - best friends with fortitude! Strangely I too recently came across a poem by George Herbert called 'Hope'. In this poem hope gifts an anchor, a telescope and ears of green wheat (roughly in return for time,prayers and tears). Of course, there's lots lots of ways you can think about these images, but if hope can be an anchor in a storm, a glimpse of land ahead, and fresh shoots promising a better harvest to come, then that's a great deal of strength in tough times. I wish there was more emphasis on hope. Many, desperate and despairing people have a deep need of this quietly impressive virtue.

Reply



Leave a Reply.

    Author

    John Lally.
    Parishioner since 1974 and parish adult catechesis.
    Retired from education in schools and colleges of education, local authority, and Birmingham Diocesan Department of RE

    Archives

    July 2023
    April 2023
    January 2023
    December 2022
    November 2022

    Categories

    All

    RSS Feed

Website by Gabriel Media Limited
Picture